


the lengths you've already gone

by ravinilla



Series: Leeway to Live [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Existential Angst, Introspection, M/M, Mortality, Post-Chapter 698 (Naruto), Sad Fluff, Weird Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 17:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13641231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravinilla/pseuds/ravinilla
Summary: It's within natural disposition as an Uchiha to have an intimate relationship with one's mortality.





	the lengths you've already gone

It's within natural disposition as an Uchiha to have an intimate relationship with one's mortality. This, Sasuke knows, and every time he's been on the brink of death, he's thought: _Finally._

There's no one left he can discuss this with, but he never would think to do that to begin with. Shinobi are all similar in this aspect, but... There aren't a lot of shinobi like Sasuke, are there? Unlike most, Sasuke has gone to the grave and back—not only once or twice, either. He's been there, at the very edge of oblivion, on the brink of losing everything, at the end where there is _nothing._

The development of Sasuke accepting that someday he will die and not having qualms with it is fairly new: Revenge's driving force was so potent and _powerful_ _,_ that it never crossed his mind as an adolescent. Into his teenage years, he'd felt like a young, immortal god with a divine duty to deliver justice.

What a fool he'd been.

While imprisoned, void of every sense but hearing, Sasuke had a lot of time to think. He had considered the events that led him up to that point in time, how his own person had changed, and how his relationships had changed. How his outlook had changed.

After Itachi, Sasuke had become someone looking for death, beckoning it forward because that had been all that waited for him. There was no _reason_ to go on; he was no longer a young god with a purpose. Finally, he had just become Sasuke, a sixteen-year-old and the last member of his cursed clan.

He had been okay with that.

(And then everything changed, and he hadn't been okay with that.)

At some point in the darkness, Sasuke had realized that he was always clinging to life by the skin of his teeth for one reason or another. Always living viciously from day to day, fueled by hatred and vengeance—or more like, he was simply a backseat passenger in his own battered body, running on those toxins. It had never been a way for any man—any _boy_ like him to live.

In that jail cell, he realized that.

Though the Leaf had deigned him a free man, Sasuke had already been set free before that by having some sense beat into him and having his arm blown off. It'd been like breaking free from a sheet of ice covering a frozen lake. Where he had no direction before, suddenly there was nowhere to go _but_ up.

There were things he wanted to do. Places he wanted to see.

Thrust back into the light after so damn long, his life finally had direction again. It wasn't purpose born of hatred that would drown him in poison, it was purpose for growth.

...Still, even with all of that, Sasuke is a dead man walking and everyone around him knows it. He no longer actively invites death, but instead has long since decided to walk along side it. He's not... scared. The only reason he has places he wants to see and things he wants to do before he disappears for good is simple, and enough for him.

He _wants_ to get up in the morning. He _wants_ to help children who can't quite stand on their own feet. He _wants_ to clear his clan's smeared name. He wants and he wants and he _wants,_ and it doesn't hurt him, it doesn't make him feel like trash because everything he wanted in the past...

But that's in the past. Even if he walks alongside death now, there's someone far more important he walks beside.

These are the things he and Naruto don't speak of if they can help it. They're both—perhaps unhealthily so—content with simply ignoring all that came before in lieu of being with each other and looking towards the future. Sasuke likes this, thinking of, looking towards a future he never knew he was allowed to have. He wants—no, _craves_ it, if Naruto is with him.

(It also frightens him, this craving he can never seem to quell.)

So then, that only leaves the tiny little problem of, what if Naruto isn't with him? He knows Naruto wants him to live, even if it has to be without him, but that's far too selfish a wish in Sasuke's opinion. The opposite, though, is true and hideously hypocritical: If Sasuke dies, he wants Naruto to live. Naruto is too important, too _precious_ to follow Sasuke down a path irreversible. There are too many people who need him, who look up to him and see the sun in its full glory.

Naruto _will_ outlive him, especially if the fox has anything to say about it. Of course, Naruto will be miserable about it, but Sasuke will watch him in every way, even if they're on separate planes. He'll watch him until it's Naruto's _natural_ time to join him—which, again, if the fox has anything to say about it, could be a very long time after that.

_That_ is not selfish, and of anything in this world, Sasuke considers himself an expert in that particular field of human nature.

Naruto surely hates him for it. Case be or not, Sasuke can't say it changes his mind.

Sasuke has never wanted to live forever, and he's not going to start wanting it now. So long as he's allowed to exist in Naruto's enduring, blazing light, it's enough until the end of his time.

•

They lay in the damp grass under a clear sky, their skins slick with sweat after a rigorous sparring. Driving their bodies to exhaustion—though both of them have disgustingly high stamina—seems to be the only way they can peacefully sleep at night.

Naruto has been uncharacteristically quiet for most of the day, and while it's a nice reprieve for Sasuke's ears, he'd much rather them bleed. A quiet Naruto means a thoughtful one, one stuck in his head, digging deeper into things that are better off left buried. These days aren't as few and far between as they used to be, and while that doesn't surprise Sasuke, it sets him on edge just a little.

Naruto does think so loud, after all.

"B-Bastard!" he sputters indignantly when Sasuke flops his arm stump onto his face. "What the hell was that for?" He shoves Sasuke's side.

"You were thinking too loud and I couldn't rest."

"Oh, what, so you're a _mind-reader_ now?" Naruto growls, rolling onto his stomach to glare at him.

Sasuke's Sharingan flashes at him and he responds, "As a matter of fact..."

Naruto only rolls his eyes and flips him off.

A few moments of silence creep by and Sasuke sighs, resigning himself to an emotional confrontation.

"So what is it?"

"Huh?"

Naruto's chin is resting in his bandaged hand, and he twists his head to look at Sasuke. Even in the dark, his eyes are so vibrant and blue, so deep that the stars themselves live in them. Sasuke can barely handle the sight.

He measures his words patiently in his head and inhales, exhales once. "What's on your mind?"

The pause is so long that Sasuke begins to think Naruto won't answer, but then he teases, "Aw, Sasuke, you _do_ care!"

"Don't make me regret asking." he replies almost immediately.

Naruto grins, but it doesn't reach his eyes, or even bunch his cheeks. It's false and disconcerting.

"...Did you know," he starts several moments later, "that Uzumaki have ridiculously long lifespans?"

He says it like he didn't thoroughly school Sasuke on every bit of Uzumaki history salvaged from their trip to the ruins of the Eddy Village. He doesn't mention this though, and decides to hum noncommittally.

"The records show multiple elders living to be as old as a hundred-and- _ten."_ Naruto goes on to say. "Mito Uzumaki lived about that long. She was still alive well into the Third's reign, y'know."

It's nothing Sasuke hasn't heard before, but he supposes Naruto is saying it for a reason, so he listens. He does admit that such a long life is... perplexing to think about, especially for a shinobi. The average lifespan of one is barely thirty-five. For a human, a real, breathing human like he and Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi to live past one hundred years? Why, it's near-unfathomable.

There are no records of a single Uchiha living past sixty.

"I bet my mom woulda lived to be that old. Older than the hag herself." he chuckles, but there's little feeling behind it, and it prickles at Sasuke's chest.

He wants to prod for more, dig for more, sift under Naruto's skin and figure out exactly what he's getting at, but he doesn't. Naruto clearly wants to ramble on about this, and Sasuke knows there's a point, so he doesn't.

"She woulda outlived dad, I think. By like, so many years." Naruto tilts his head up towards the sky and the universe shifts in his eyes. "Granny Tsunade would outlive anyone she got with, for sure." he chuckles, and Sasuke's sure Tsunade, inevitably drinking herself under some table, heard him say that. Their mission load would double almost certainly. "She did outlive Uncle Dan after all..."

_Her brother, too._ Sasuke adds in his mind, but doesn't dare speak it aloud. Naruto's not sensitive about the subject, but the crystal hanging from his neck is. It glints at him as if to say so.

Naruto then snorts. "I've already outlived myself." he says. "Like. A lot. Like, a lot-a lot."

The tone is lighthearted but the implications are not; the implications keep them— _both_ of them—up at night. Naruto begins to fidget at his arm bandages and slivers of wood show through. Sasuke can feel his own phantom limb buzz, just this side of uncomfortable, and he shifts.

The breeze rapidly cooling their bodies doesn't help either.

Before Sasuke can stop his idiot mouth, out slips, "You'll outlive me."

The universe dies in Naruto's eyes and he goes very still. The breeze sounds more like a gale with the force of a Wind Element jutsu. Goosebumps ripple almost painfully over the skin of Sasuke's body, and he becomes acutely aware of how cold he's getting. They'll both get sick at this rate—

(Or just him. Naruto doesn't _get_ sick. Kurama hates illness.)

"No." Naruto says firmly, and Sasuke can tell he's upset. Why couldn't he have bit his tongue?

...But they both know how much truth weighs the statement down. An Uzumaki lifespan is ludicrously long. Uchiha, if _lucky,_ live until they're forty. Sasuke—ah, Sasuke. Well.

He's a dead man walking.

"No." Naruto says again, and he pushes himself up, folding his legs crisscross. He stares at Sasuke, long enough to make him uncomfortable, hard enough to drive his body into the Earth's core. "I will not."

That challenging tone, something Sasuke's never been able to ignore, not once in his ungodly life, loosens his tongue. "Yes. You will."

"No, I _won't."_

He's starting to trespass into Sasuke's personal space (which is a huge lie because there is none between them), his jaw set and his eyes even darker. The abyss there is frighting.

"Did you know," Sasuke murmurs, voice too quiet even for himself, "that Uchiha have ridiculously short lifespans?"

Naruto's face is in his now, hands braced on either side of Sasuke's head, knees bracketing his hips. His brow is furrowed deep, contorting it into something very ugly and disturbing to Sasuke's heart. Blood runs a little thicker in his veins.

"Not _this_ Uchiha." Naruto says quietly, his head tilting. "Not _my_ Uchiha."

The possessiveness is—is a quality they share, but Naruto shows it far less. When he does, however, Sasuke can't move. He's pinned down, and becomes intimately reacquainted with the fact that every piece of him, every cell in his body, every ounce of chakra in him... It all belongs to Naruto.

"Hn."

Because it's the only reply he can give. He _knows_ Naruto, who he is and what he's capable of, and it's useless to stop him when he's utterly set on something. For some gods-forsaken reason, the ultimate _something_ has turned out to be, of all things, Sasuke.

Their lips brush when Naruto says his next words, slow and deliberate, "Live with me."

This strain of conversation feels familiar, but he can't place it right now. Naruto's weight descending upon his bare chest is distracting, too.

"I do live with you, moron."

"No." Naruto says, and then whispers, like the whole world may be listening, _"Live_ with me."

_Ah._

Regardless of facts or Sasuke's own personal opinion, Naruto walks a line all his own and drags whoever he pleases with him. It just so happens to be that Sasuke has the unfortunate luck of being the one he won't let go of.

(Or perhaps, the luckiest person to ever exist.)

His eyes fall close in tandem with the weak smirk at his lips, and he can barely muster his next words:

"As if you could ever live without me."

Their lips brush with every form of his mouth, but he's far too exhausted to give anything more. Naruto though, per his usual self, simply dives in the rest of the way. It's hard not to be swept into his depths when he does that, hard to want for the shoreline.

If Naruto wills it, Sasuke supposes he'll just have to exist forever.

Of the things in his life he's sure of, Sasuke is a dead man walking. It's kind of common knowledge that, well—

Dead men can't exactly die again, can they?

**Author's Note:**

> Tadah! I wrote a second piece, which I was expecting to do but regret anyway because now this series is dragging me after it once more... This awful, awful life...
> 
> I'll be writing one more to this series, from Kurama's point of view.
> 
> Crossposted to [Tumblr](https://uchiuzus.tumblr.com/post/170749873103>).


End file.
